Anthony Davis installs wiring Tuesday at the new H-E-B grocery store in Pearland. The grocer is expected to open new locations in Grant/Spring-Cypress, League City, The Woodlands and Tanglewood this year.

Anthony Davis installs wiring Tuesday at the new H-E-B grocery...

Driven by grocery chains as mainstream as Kroger and H-E-B and as niche as Aldi and Trader Joe's, retail construction across the Houston region is forecast to grow more in 2014 than in any year since the recession.

The annual retail survey from Wulfe & Co. predicts the addition of 2.61 million square feet in 2014, which would be 34 percent more new space than last year. It would be the fourth straight year of construction increases since the collapse of 2009 and 2010.

"This is the first year we've seen a really big retail push in Houston since the recession," said economist Bill Gilmer of the University of Houston's Baeur College of Business.

Twenty-eight new supermarkets and other grocery stores will make up almost 50 percent of the growth, said Ed Wulfe, chairman and CEO of Wulfe & Co., a Houston-based retail real estate brokerage, development and property management firm.

Wulfe has conducted the survey for 21 years and claims a 95 percent accuracy rate.

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By the numbers

28 New supermarkets and grocery stores expected to be built in the Houston area in 2014

50 percent Of the retail growth in the Houston area will be from supermarkets and grocery stores

34 percent Increase in retail space being built for 2014 over last year

H-E-B will open five new stores here in 2014, he said, and Kroger will add three and expand another, Whole Foods four, Trader Joe's and Fresh Market two each, and Fiesta and Sprouts one each.

Discount grocer Aldi will open 10 more of its relatively smaller stores, he said.

Big-box discount stores will also expand with two Walmart Supercenters, one Sam's Club and one Costco. Those stores also have big food departments.

Wulfe attributed the grocery growth to job and population increases.

Gilmer said retail, struggling with competition from online sources, has yet to see the explosive growth experienced by office, apartments and other real estate sectors in Houston.

Much of the grocery store growth is in suburban areas around the Grand Parkway and inside the Loop where young urban professionals are moving, Gilmer said.

Area 'evolving'

H-E-B this year is expected to open new stores in Pearland, Grant/Spring-Cypress, League City, The Woodlands and the Tanglewood area, spokeswoman Cyndy Garza Roberts said.

Kroger, meanwhile, plans to open stores in Spring, Cypress and Humble. The chain plans one expansion to an existing location and 19 remodeling projects, said Bill Breetz, president of Kroger Southwest.

"With Houston continuing to top national relocation lists year after year, our city is rapidly evolving and expanding, which is our impetus for the addition of new stores," Breetz said.

Like Texas as a whole, the greater Houston region is on a sustained growth spurt that demographers say could boost the population by 3 million over the next two decades. Already, large new housing developments are in the works from north of the Grand Parkway to south of Pearland to once-remote areas like Fulshear. Builders are expected to start an average of 30,000 to 35,000 homes here annually over the next five years.

A spokesman for discount grocer Aldi would not confirm the Wulfe estimate, but said the chain planned to open 15 stores in the area this year and next.

High occupancy rate

Restaurant space, another food-related sector, will also grow substantially this year, Wulfe said.

In recent years medical and health care services, including 24-hour emergency clinics, have been leasing traditional retail spaces, he said, and the trend will continue.

This year's projected growth would still be significantly below pre-recession levels. The region added 6.3 million square feet of retail space in 2008. That number plummeted by more than half the following year and fell to less than 1 million square feet in 2010.

The numbers have risen steadily since.

Wulfe also said Houston's retail sector should achieve an occupancy rate of 93 percent this year. That would be an all-time high, he said, creating competition for available space and possibly causing rents to go up.